›› MUSiC
My back pages From Neil Young to Sugarhill—for those about to read, we salute you! by G r e g Cahill
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t’s summertime, and the readin’ is easy. Kick back. Pour a cold one. Find a shady spot on a hammock. Crank up the stereo—I suggest “Loungin’” by the late, great Guru (with a cool blast of jazz trumpet by Donald Byrd). And grab a good book. Not one of those ready-for-the-beach novels or self-help diatribes that bedazzle the Oprah Book Club—a meaty music book.
Here are five to consider. Rock icon Neil Young—who performs July 11, 12 and 14 at the Fox Theater in Oakland—has had a long and varied career: pop star, folk-rock and Americana innovator, godfather of grunge. Over the years, that career has brought him to the North Bay for drop-dead club dates at the now-defunct River City in Fairfax and Cotati Cabaret in Cotati. Now he’s traveling to your coffee table thanks to Long May You Run: The Illustrated
History (Voyageur Press), by Daniel Durchholz and Gray Graff, an electrifying 226-page book that chronicles the singer, songwriter and guitarist’s five-decade career. It’s overflowing with rare photos, official discography and artifacts (posters, handbills, ticket stubs, et al) as well as first-source interviews with Young, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Steve Stills and many others. Recommended listening: Neil Young: Archives, Vol. 1 (Warner/Reprise)
In his excellent biography Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), author Terry Teachout explores the complex and seemingly contradictory traits that characterized the jazz trumpet legend known alternately as Pops and Satchmo (from satchel mouth). Armstrong’s music never goes out of vogue: Wynton Marsalis recently launched a national tour of Louis, a new silent film with live accompaniment, based, in part, on the young Armstrong’s life. Armstrong—the genre’s first significant soloist—led a storied life that spanned 70 years. As a recording artist, concert performer, actor and author, he helped shape the face of jazz while garnering numerous awards and becoming a pop culture icon. Recommended listening: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (Columbia/Legacy) Author Robin D. G. Kelley delivers an equally authoritative note with Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press). He paints the human side of this remarkable jazz pianist and visionary, cutting through the often dismissive treatises that have relegated Monk to the status of nutty eccentric. Recommended listening: Thelonious Monk Live in Stockholm 1961 (Dragon) Miles Davis’s landmark 1959 album, Kind of Blue—the best-selling jazz album of all time—gets a fresh perspective in The Blue Moment: Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and the Remaking of Modern Music (Norton). This collection of thought-provoking essays by Richard Williams examines the ways in which the album shaped the work not only of such jazz greats as John Coltrane and Chick Corea, but also avant-garde artists like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, as well as such rock innovators as the Velvet Underground, whose influence ripples through contemporary indie-rock and experimental pop. Recommended listening: Kind of Blue (Columbia/Legacy) In House of Hits: The Story of Houston’s Gold Star/Sugarhill Recording Studios (University of Texas Press), music historians Andy Bradley and Roger Wood offer the untold story of how the littleknown regional facility helped to usher in the age of rock ’n’ roll, country, modern blues and gospel. Country artists George Jones, Freddy Fender and Floyd Tillman all recorded there. So did Texas blues greats Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert Collins and Bobby Bland. Psychedelic pioneers the 13th Floor Elevators and Tex-Mex rockers the Sir Douglas Quintet cut key sides there. Sugarhill Studio even played a behind-the-scenes role in the career of Destiny’s Child, which spawned Beyonce. Recommended listening: Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” (produced at Sugarhill Studio and the perfect addition to your summer serenade). ✹ Whistle a few bars for Greg at gcahill51@gmail.com. Tune up to the Marin music scene at
›› pacificsun.com 28 PACIFIC SUN JUNE 25 - JULY 1, 2010